Movie Review: Even Money (2006)

Genre: Gambling Drama  

Director: Mark Rydell  

Starring: Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito, Kelsey Grammer, Tim Roth, Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Carla Gugino  

Running Time: 113 minutes  

Synopsis: Aspiring author Carolyn (Kim Basinger) is addicted to slot machines, but keeps her problem a secret from husband Tom (Ray Liotta). At the casino she meets and forms an empathy bond with has-been magician Walter (Danny DeVito). Clyde (Forest Whitaker) is deep in gambling debts owed to bookie Augie (Jay Mohr), and pressures his brother Godfrey (Nick Cannon), a star college basketball athlete, into shaving points. Both Augie and Walter have reasons to connect with ruthless criminal Victor (Tim Roth), who controls the biggest illegal gambling network on behalf of the reclusive Ivan. Meanwhile, police detective Brunner (Kelsey Grammer) tries to keep a lid on escalating violence in the gambling world.

What Works Well: This anthology benefits from the pervasive down-but-keep-digging psychology of gambling, with key characters deep into the addiction morass and far from seeking help. Kim Basinger and Forest Whitaker add star power to the doldrums, and allow the separate stories of Carolyn and Clyde to quickly develop within the efficient running time. Tim Roth contributes venom to Victor's heartless dean of crime, while Kelsey Grammer fits perfectly into a frumpled detective's overcoat, his defeated attitude saluting the human propensity for self-destruction.

What Does Not Work As Well: A sub-plot featuring Augie's partner in the bookie business Murph and his girlfriend (Carla Gugino) just gets in the way. Overall, emotions are confined to plastic predictability, and the resolutions default to tidyness carrying bags of faux poignancy.

Key Quote:

Detective Brunner (narrating): The question is...what are you willing to lay on the line?

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Movie Review: The God Committee (2021)

A medical ethics drama, The God Committee tackles organ transplant dilemmas but insists on a surly tone. 

Events jump between two timelines in 2014 and 2021. In 2014, the romantic relationship between the dour and near-retirement Dr. Andre Boxer (Kelsey Grammer) and the much younger Dr. Jordan Taylor (Julia Stiles) is coming to an end. They are both heart surgeons on the organ transplant committee of New York's St. Augustine Hospital. 

A fatal motor vehicle accident in Baltimore means a donor heart has become available, and the committee has to select from three candidate recipients: an overweight man with a previous suicide attempt, an elderly woman who is ambivalent about receiving a new heart; or a young entitled man with a history of drug addiction.  The young man is the son of business tycoon Emmett Granger (Dan Hedaya), who complicates the committee's work by dangling the potential of a $25 million gift to the hospital.

In 2021, Boxer has retired from the hospital and is leading an ambitious research program that could enable organ harvesting in animals for potential human use. Emmet is one of his main funders, but Boxer's health is deteriorating, jeopardizing the program. Meanwhile, Jordan is a senior doctor at the hospital, and a mother to a six-year-old boy.

An independent production, The God Committee adapts a play by Mark St. Germain, and seeks the intersection of medicine, morality, and money. Director Austin Stark also wrote the screenplay, and enjoys the presence of a talented cast to help overcome the lack of high-budget pizazz. In addition to Kelsey Grammer, Julia Stiles, and Dan Hedaya, Janeane Garofalo (the hospital's chief administrator) and Colman Domingo (a priest with a past and an agenda) have tasty roles.

The source material appears intended as a tense debate-around-the-table in the vein of 12 Angry Men. Stark does well to free the movie from stage origins, the drama visiting multiple locations and never feeling constrained. The twin timeline structure adds narrative tension and a benefit-of-time consequence to the central guessing game of who gets the donor heart.

While the main characters are provocative, they are also weighed down and wrestling with predictable soon-to-be-exposed flaws. Dr. Boxer, Dr. Taylor, and investor Granger all carry a ton of emotional bricks into every scene, nary a smile nor witticism in evidence. The script is a couple of polishes away from a final product, the dialogue lacking zing and the stream of self-satisfied revelations barely making an impression.

The central theme digs into the conundrums of a committee grappling with the God-like power to decide which patient gets a better chance to live. With the best of intentions, personal judgements, subjective assessments, self-interest, and the influence of money contaminate the process. The medical professionals around this table are not above talking themselves into compromising decisions, the big picture and individual patient needs often obscuring each other. 

Without lecturing, The God Committee does point to the potential for a better science-enabled future, but other committees in other movies will need to uncork the ethical dilemmas of using animals to harvest organs for humans. 



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Movie Review: Swing Vote (2008)

Interesting premise. Horrible execution.

Sometimes, Hollywood just seems to forget what the word "subtle" means, or how powerful it can be to deliver a message with cleverness and gentle prodding. Instead, the brash "in your face" delivery method is unleashed to carpet bomb any trace of soul that tries to poke itself out of the ground.

Swing Vote, directed by Joshua Michael Stern and written by Stern and Jason Richman, has Kevin Costner as the blue collar uneducated beer-loving single dad who is the beneficiary of a computer malfunction and gets to cast his vote again in the US Presidential election. And on his vote rides the outcome of the entire tight election between the Republican incumbent (Kelsey Grammer) and the Democratic challenger (Dennis Hopper). Interesting premise, and a clever idea that could have delivered compelling drama, comedy, or both. But in the hands of Stern and Richman, the film is a pure colour-by-crayons disaster that seems to run backwards into every imaginable cul-de-sac.

The international press descends onto Costner's tiny town and creates a media circus that the film overcooks to a charred crisp. Then both the Republicans and the Democrats wade into the mess in an attempt to win his vote, and proceed to immediately chuck overboard all that they stand for in response to every off-handed remark made by Costner's clueless character. So for example, overnight, the Republicans become pro-environment, the Democrats become pro-life, with the two candidates bowing to every whim of their driven campaign managers.

In the middle of the farce is Costner's idealistic, precocious daughter (Madeline Carroll, the only watchable thing in the movie), who despite having two substance-abusing losers as parents is somehow growing up to be the smartest kid in all of New Mexico. And let's not forget to throw in the ambitious local female TV reporter who wants this story to be her stepping stone to national prominence, and her boss the local station executive who works hard to define the word stereotype.

The film must win recognition for strictly limiting every character to one dimension; not avoiding any cliches; and not delivering a single intelligent, memorable or reflective moment.

And if the first 110 minutes were not bad enough, the film out-does itself in the last 10 minutes. All of sudden, Costner gets a brain, and starts to care; a character who could not stop thinking about beer suddenly contrives to deliver a painful monologue about the importance of being a good citizen, working hard, contributing to society, and voting. The two candidates just as suddenly seem to find a conscience, although even this transformation is hopelessly flubbed in the case of the Democrat, who needs a full-face whacking from his wife to rediscover his values (did we mention the lack of subtlety?).

Swing Vote is witless, boring and simply awful, for its entire overblown length.






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